Christmas: “Silent night, holy night” – and I am a Jew. Tiergarten, Wednesday: Brode directs, the chapel plays. The song resounds. “I pray to the power of love, in which Jesus reveals himself...” but I don’t sing, I am a Jew.
Mom and Dad take me to the synagogue for the first time. I am in a very solemn mood. It is a great moment in my parents’ lives, and they are moved.
I would like to go to a church, too. But I’m afraid. They (I feel) are hostile to me.
At Neuhäuser with my brother. How wonderful the lilac blooms there and how strong it smells. The beach hall is close to the sea. There we sit and see the lightning striking the waves. Our hotel’s name is Balthasar. We are among the last at the table. At that time, I saw the first Bunte Grütze.[1] Children play in the square in front of the town beach hall, the children of the old families, who have their old-fashioned wooden villas and large gardens in that town.
Nobody invites us to play with them. We are Jews.
Father gets sick. He coughs terribly. The physician, Dr. Elisaasov, comes. “Just a cold,” he says, “and you are getting too fat. You’re getting old, you need to go for walks more often.”
A young doctor comes with one of my mother’s girlfriends, examines my dad and says, “Go immediately to the dear God of Steindamm.” That is Dr. Frohmann. “Too late,” the latter says to my mother. “It’s the heart and the kidneys, there is nothing I can do anymore.”
He lived in the house with this illness for five years, and then he died.
My Bar Mitsvah at age thirteen. A beautiful Haftarah from Micha: “How beautiful are your tents, O Israel.” A few people offered congratulations and left old books and gifts. The family stood on the large balcony of the house. And Benno said, “Family P. is waiting for guests.”
Benno, Hans, and Lene, my siblings, live each for themselves. None of them go out together, but Mom is like a hen that gives warmth and cohesion under her feathers.
At age sixteen, Father, who’s already very ill, takes me to a friend he is in business with, Max Gerschmann (wood and construction, sawmill and planing), and says, “Even though you’re just an employee, just figure that this is your own business and act accordingly.”
This is how play and school time ended.
[1] Literally “colorful grit”, a German fruit dish.